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The character 蜉 appears almost exclusively in the biological term 蜉蝣, meaning mayfly, a winged insect noted for its extremely short adult life. It follows the standard phono-semantic pattern for insect characters: the bug radical 虫 on the left places it in the semantic category of invertebrates, while the component 孚 on the right provides its pronunciation. Because the mayfly lives only a day after maturity, 蜉 has become a potent metaphor in classical poetry and philosophy for life’s brevity, mortality, and the swift passage of time.
Etymology Hide
